“Gray Hat Python” by Justin Seitz, one of the latest releases from publisher, No Starch Press, focuses on using the Python programming language for reverse engineering. This book is subtitled “Python Programming for Hackers and Reverse Engineers” which is fitting as Justin is a member of Immunity Security, makers of the Canvas penetration testing platform and the Immunity Debugger. The foreword by Dave Aitel, Immunity's CEO, is an excellent introduction to why the content of this book is important. It focuses on the short time span that is required from discovery of a bug to exploit, and the necessity for flexible, fast, and collaborative vulnerability discovery and exploit development. Dave does an excellent job in setting the tone for why the information in the book is relevant and what the drive is for these types of tools in the industry.

Add your thoughts on Ryan's review or on the book itself.

Don

Last edited by don on Wed Jul 01, 2009 1:09 am, edited 1 time in total.

n3r wrote:Hi !do you think i can start learning Python with this book or i should go for another one ?

Having briefly thumbed through this book, I'd certainly say it's not a book for learning the language. I'd say at least a "moderate" level of python would be needed to work successfully though it, as it doesn't hold your hand through learning the basics of the language. It won't hurt you by just jumping in, but you may become frustrated with lack of understanding of some of the advanced functions, and it may have the unintended side effect of thinking python sucks (the primary reason I detest perl... i never really learned the language, but had to maintain code written by others, and without a proper understanding, i just eventually said "man, this crap sucks... give me something that makes sense!") I'd recommend the good `ol O'Reilly "Learning Python" book if you're just starting with the language.

The first half of the book is intro for several languages with practical examples. The second half is all application of the first half. The intro pieces are all quick and dirty introductions to the various languages and I think should be enough to get most folks going on them.